“Moana Blues” published by Au Vent des Iles, is the story of a day of mourning in the heart of Tahitian society. Anne-Catherine Blanc plunges us into the introspection of a father-in-law expatriated to French Polynesia and torn by the drowning of his son-in-law. In the chair of A la 1ère page, she looks back on the genesis of her moving novel.
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Moana, 16, drowned. Paulot, her stepfather, wanders through the house in mourning. He feels alien to the customs and reactions of his own, these islanders whose life he has chosen to share without ever quite succeeding. Without authority over the course of the funeral, deprived of his daily dive into the ocean, the Moana, he plunges into himself, confronts his ghosts, his doubts, his remorse to, finally, emerge from this questioning purified by the pain he feels and the compassion that surrounds him. Far from clichés, a story regarding the confrontation of cultures, the difficulty of being and self-fulfilment.
During its first edition in Tahiti, Mhis Blues received the Student Prize from the University of French Polynesia in 2003.
Of Catalan origin, Anne-Catherine Blanc was born and raised in Senegal, in Joal, the village of Léopold Sédar Senghor. She lived for many years in Polynesia. After studying literature in Aix-en-Provence, she worked as a French teacher in Algeria and Morocco, then in Tahiti, before settling in the South of France. Her mother was Swiss, her father half-Catalan, half-Vietnamese, so she defines herself as genetically nomadic and a citizen of the world. Her passions have always been and remain travel, the sea and writing.
“In the semi-darkness of the room, the faces, by contrast, seem black. On the ceiling, the air circulator stirs together the ocean humidity, so familiar, a brave old perfume of soluble coffee, a whiff of clean sweat .More a vague religious emanation that he misplaces but which infiltrates the fear in his spine.”
Anne-Catherine Blanc, Moana Blues (2023), Editions Au vent des Iles
Find the other writers from the Overseas Territories of the literary magazine À la 1ère Page.
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